“In ‘Figaro’s Wedding’ they are all so quick-witted”, thus one of the ten propositions with which Michael Hampe, one of the best-known and most experienced opera directors and theatrical managers, backs up his staging of Mozart’s opera buffa. He refers thereby to the attentiveness and nimble thinking written into text and music of the action of the comedy “Le nozze di Figaro” by Mozart (1756-1791) and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.

The two servants Figaro and Susanna want to marry and need the consent of their master Count Almaviva, and not only they have to show cunning and alertness in warding off the machinations of their lordly master; the Countess herself too, the page Cherubino, the housekeeper Marcellina, the litigant Dr. Bartolo, even Antonio the gardener complete with love-hungry young Barbarina, in this comedy they are all of them exposed to perpetual shifts from attack to defence, they all pursue their own interests and all of them have to suffer setbacks.

“Histrionically characterized with a sharpness touching physiology, observantly daemonic in its psychological insight, Mozart’s music lays all the depths of the human soul bare as if with a laser beam, revealing the heart beating beneath.” Michael Hampe does everything to afford an exemplary view of the genius of Mozart that pervades this play of many intrigues.